PSU President discusses future of the university

State College, PA (WJAC) — The president of Penn State says outcomes and accountability of university programming will remain key issues moving forward as the university's top administrator outlined her vision for Penn State's future priorities on Monday.

Dr. Neeli Bendapudi talked about the past, Penn State's role as a land grant university, and its future.

She also shared a new online dashboard that will show student graduation rates by race, and other campus diversity related issues.

In recent months, the university's operating budget has been front and center.

There was an estimated $140 million deficit when Bendapudi took over.

Among her priorities now include transforming Penn State’s internal operations, streamlining and modernizing is the university's terminology.

We asked will that mean possible personnel or programming cutbacks, especially in terms of reducing the deficit

“In some places it might be, we don’t need three people, we just need one. In other places it may be we have too few, we need more people. It’s a difficult question to answer.”

Bendapudi also spoke about enhancing student success for their future endeavors, better leveraging of the university's vast resources and alumni support and lessons learned from the pandemic, in terms of online academics.

“We have learned that it’s not simply taking your lesson and moving it online. We also learned lessons for the world of work, when we talk about education, that it’s also told us work is what we do, not where we go.”

Along with closing the deficit by 2025, Bendapudi stressed building Penn State's billion dollars a year research programs, and including the university's commonwealth campuses in spurring further statewide economic development.

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